


[Meta] Edward & Carlisle

by wanderlustlover



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Canon Meta, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 11:35:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As requested by sardonicynic on February 11, 2010. Which I keep losing and needing to find, and am saving for posterity here, with all my other Cullen's Meta as I located it (and keep it forever, not lost in the bowels of my Gmail, LJ, and DW).</p>
            </blockquote>





	[Meta] Edward & Carlisle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stephmuji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephmuji/gifts).



The first and most proper response is this:

> _"They belong together. The end."_
> 
> _P.S. And they'll find a way, no matter which canon and situation._

Let's begin with the awesome truth. It was not Neenie or Milliways that sold me on Carlisle/Edward, it was Canon and Stephenie Myer. Not even kidding you slightly.

Specifically, New Moon and the whole way it ends. Let me lay out two key canon moments for you that seriously had me sit up and examine how deep and multifaceted their relationship might be. 

 

**1.** The moment that Bella leaps into Edward's arms to stop himself from revealing himself to the Volturi, we're supposed to assume he's going to die, and wants to die, and thinks he'll go nowhere since he has new view point of having a soul at all. 

So there he is, believing he's died, and Bella's in his arms, and his first words are _"Amazing. Carlisle was right."_ Not only is he not even talking to Bella in his arms or focusing on her, he's talking about an issue centuries older than her. Whether he has a soul. Whether he can go to heaven. 

And whether he agrees or disagrees with his own point of view is irrelvant before his awe, and possibly very deeply hidden, want for Carlisle to have been right all along. 

 

**2.** The end of New Moon Bella leads Edward into a vote with his family against his opinion of her being changed. The last vote is Carlisle's. The narration does this so specifically I can't even kid you. Everyone is telling Bella their vote, and Carlisle looks at Edward and is talking to him. 

They. No, forget it. Let me copy it.

> _Carlisle wasn't looking at me [Bella]._
> 
> _"Edward," he said._
> 
> _"No," Edward growled. His jaw was strained tight, his lips curled back from his teeth._
> 
> _"It's the only way that makes sense," Carlisle insisted._
> 
> _"You've chosen not to live without her, and that doesn't leave me a choice."_
> 
> _Edward dropped my hand, shoving away from the table._
> 
> _He stalked out of the room, snarling under his breath._
> 
> _"I guess you know my vote." Carlisle sighed._

Forget, Bella. AGAIN. They aren't even talking about whether Edward loves Bella. Whether Edward wants to save her soul. Carlisle isn't siding with Bella. He's siding with "what action" will keep Edward alive, with them. Because it's the only way he can have Edward with them and alive, and if that is what it is, there is absolutely no vote, no choice. Which means if that "what" is Bella, then obviously Bella is staying with them.

Edward is pissed at Carlisle's vote like no one else's in the room. And Carlisle sigh's watching Edward go to have his destructive temperaturum about it in the room. Which is the first time either of them are acknowledging anyone else is in the room, being there or needing to know his vote, at all now. And all this scene said to me was EPIC OTHER ISSUES. 

 

Which in retrospect makes sense. Edward has been there the longest. He was the first person of the Cullen family. Carlisle's first need too great to hold off from. A companion. An other. The first person in Carlisle's life really in more than two hundred years. And Edward who would have still be very much the golden boy. Pre-Esme, and pre-his running away to sully his soul. 

But these two don't even matter either. Nor Bella. They are already having this in the same book in which Edward is doing all of this because of Bella and yet Carlisle, Bella hears from Alice's mouth directly, couldn't smile or laugh once Edward left the family. It's all pre-existing things all happening at once, for people who've all but spent centuries next to each other. 

Which led to Milliways, where Steph took two months to go "So, uh, there's things I've been meaning to ask, since we're writing historical ooms" and we'd both gotten the same vibe from canon, which explored not specifically, but sort of just chose to let the whole of historical unwind how it would. 

How someone completely removed from the world at large, but so dawn to save people, and someone golden, but stolen from life, in the early prime of their life would effect each other. And we've spent literally almost two years at this now. It doesn't matter the timeline, whether canon happens or doesn't happen. These are two people who need each other, who fill in each other very necessary things. 

They are wholly, unhelthy codependent. But they're, also, strikingly beautiful. They have flares of reality and softness with each other you don't really see elsewhere. 

Carlisle, who has a hard time getting beyond his very anglician stricture of speech and actio, doesn't haven't to worry about being misunderstood or not speaking enough. He gets an intellectual equal, both in someone who's read almost as much as him, who's studied medicine for him. Who is the clearest example of of his achievement in this life (as I'm stealing from Neenie). Who literally gave him back his self worth, and recognition of his wants in someone of his own kind. 

Carlisle is very literally Edward's compass for all of existence. The reason he lives his life the way he does. Whether or not it's true at the root of Edward, his outward claim will be that he lives his life, no matter how hard it is with people, with being a fifteen (not even kidding here either, my god, Stephenie Meyer) to nineteen year old in high school -- is for Carlisle to have the life he wants, as a doctor, in public. 

Carlisle will never not see the good in Edward, and vice-versa, and they are two people who are endlessly hard on themselves for some very canon deserved reasons. Who need each other because each of them is the person who has been there the longest. 

Are they woefully complicated? Dear, bejeezus, yes. Especially if we're talking canon in Milliways. Trapped in a deep dark hole, almost willing to end the world for each other at different points, complicated. Never once breaking canon or characterization, never once changing the world handed to us in the books. Probably never having touched more than casually, when not fighting, really in decades on decades. 

And before I write ten more paragraphs, I close with this conversation written while writing this:

> _Amanda: God. How do I ever stop talking about Edward/Carlisle.  
>  Steph: xD We haven't managed it yet?_


End file.
